[Differential diagnosis in phoniatrics and pediatric audiology. Language-aphasia]

The incidence of aphasia in a population of 100 000 is about 60 new cases a year. Although the aphasic patient represents a neurological problem, aphasia seems rather to be a linguistic one. Therefore, this report on the diagnosis of aphasia includes a comprehensive linguistic introduction on the function and structure of language. After a presentation of different aphasiologic schools and their classification of the aphasic syndromes, the differential diagnoses of other neurological disorders of verbal communication from aphasia are given. The subsequent section concerns the clinical investigation of aphasia. Finally, the most common tests for aphasia are reviewed.